[Gambas-user] Key code constant wrong?

Randall Morgan rmorgan62 at ...626...
Mon Nov 11 05:01:31 CET 2013


This is an interesting thread.... If you look back at some of the early
keyboards you will see that they did name the two keys differently. And
this was a hold over from the use of Qwerty keyboards on teletypes and
typewriters. The key on the text (main) keyboard is the return key. On
teletypes the key causes the carriage to return to the beginning of the
line. While the Enter key on the ten-key (numerical) keypad was taken from
the mechanical adding machines of the day. The enter key caused the
numerical value that was punch into numerical keys to be entered into the
calculation.

With the move away from these mechanical devices most people (except us old
timers) have never seen or used a mechanical ten-key or Underwood
typewriter. The effect of the two keys on computer systems today is pretty
much the same. However I believe they remain separate for two reasons.
First, the need to maintain compatibility with any software that does use
them differently and second because the keys are laid out in a matrix
fashion that causes each key to have a distinct value. But it would not
surprise me if someday the keys are merged.

Hope that shines some light on where the difference came from. My first PC
was an Altair 8800 without a keyboard. Mice hadn't been invented and
remember joy and sense of accomplishment we felt when my father and I got
the 88 to draw a circle on the oscilloscope. My first key pad was radio
shack's little red (the black ones were n.c. and the red n.o.) all tide
together on a piece of paneling. All buffered with 7404 hex inverters and
sent to a custom board plugged into the 88's back plane. Those were the
days when you build what you programmed. A lot of fun and a lot of work! I
sure wish I still had that old 88. It would be worth something now but it
was lost in a fire.

Ok, I'm done with the nostalgia thanks for letting me share. Hope I shed a
bit of light on the key issue.



On Sun, Nov 10, 2013 at 5:10 PM, Dimitris Anogiatis <dosida at ...626...>wrote:

> Perhaps its a remnand from the typewriter days...where the separation
> between line feed and carriage return was more visible due to its
> mechanical nature.
>
>
>
> On Sun, Nov 10, 2013 at 2:10 AM, Benoît Minisini <
> gambas at ...1...> wrote:
>
> > Le 10/11/2013 06:05, Alain Baudrez a écrit :
> > >
> > > Why is Enter printed on that key on my laptop ??
> > >
> > > I would never have guessed to refer to Key.Return instead of key.Enter.
> > >
> > > Alain
> >
> > Good question: both are named "Enter" (in french) on my keyboard too,
> > but they have always been two different keys internally.
> >
> > You must assume that two physicals different keys should always have
> > different Key.Code values (even if this is not always the case!).
> >
> > --
> > Benoît Minisini
> >
> >
> >
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